HOT TOPICS:

These coaches might answer if University of Minnesota calls needing a replacement for football coach Tim Brewster

By Charley Walters

Posted:
10/16/2010 12:01:00 AM CDT

Updated:
10/16/2010 11:12:09 PM CDT

Saturday's 28-17 loss at Purdue pretty much made it clear that the University of Minnesota will have a new football coach next year.

One guess at a preliminary list of potential candidates to replace Tim Brewster would seem to include Houston's Kevin Sumlin, a popular former Gophers assistant whose University of Houston team scores lots of points.

Sumlin, 46, is a former Purdue linebacker who worked for Jim Wacker and Glen Mason at Minnesota.

Texas Christian coach Gary Patterson, 50, was among top candidates sought when Brewster was hired, but it's highly unlikely he would leave a program that is 6-0 this season. But with a new stadium and a Big Ten Network that gets you on TV every week, he's certainly worth a call.

Former Gophers quarterback Marc Trestman, 54, raised in St. Louis Park, is expected to get serious consideration. Trestman has coached the Montreal Alouettes to a Canadian Football League Grey Cup championship and runner-up finish his first two seasons and has Montreal leading the CFL's East Division at 10-4 this season.

Trestman, who also was considered before Brewster was hired, has lots of local support and would be considered an early front-runner if he were interested. But he's said to have a strong loyalty to his ownership in Montreal.

Mike Bellotti, who built the Oregon program, would seem a peripheral prospect.

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But Bellotti is 59 years old and ultimately was bought out as the Ducks' athletics director, a job he accepted after coaching the school to 12 bowls in 14 seasons and a 116-55 record. He's an ESPN college football analyst.

UConn's Randy Edsall, 57, is a proven winner but an East Coast guy. Northwestern's Pat Fitzgerald, 35, probably does more with the talent he has than any college coach in America. But he's a Northwestern grad and may be reluctant to leave.

Former Gophers QB Tony Dungy, who coached the Indianapolis Colts to a Super Bowl championship, will be the first person Minnesota AD Joel Maturi calls. Dungy, an NBC-TV NFL analyst, isn't interested in coaching the Gophers but is expected to be asked to advise on the coaching search.

It will be interesting whether the university hires Chuck Neinas' consulting service when it seeks a new Gophers football coach.

It wouldn't be surprising if Brewster ends up with assistant-coaching offers from pals Mike Shanahan of the Washngton Redskins or Brown of Texas, where Brewster's son Nolan is a defensive back.

The Vikings' 1-3 start makes it imperative that they beat the Dallas Cowboys today at the Metrodome, just to have a chance at getting into the playoffs.

The Vikings probably need to win two of their next three games to have a playoff chance, and after today they play the Packers in Green Bay and the Patriots in New England.

And, even if they are able to do that, the Vikings probably will need to win seven of their remaining nine games to finish 10-6 and ensure a playoff berth.

That's going to be difficult.

Considering the distraction surrounding quarterback Brett Favre over alleged mailing of lewd photos and inappropriate messages to a female Jets employee when he played for New York, coupled by tendinitis in Favre's throwing elbow, playing backup QB Tarvaris Jackson instead might actually give the Vikings a better chance to win. Jackson has an able and strong arm to get the ball downfield to new wideout Randy Moss.

Despite the loss, NFL scouts had to like Gophers QB Adam Weber's arm strength against Purdue.

Hastings native Dan Carey, the former New York Mets minor league pitcher who has been undergoing chemotherapy and radiation treatments for brain cancer since March, is about to begin a first-time clinical study treatment.

"I'll be the first human subject to get it," said Carey, 61, a physiology professor at the University of St. Thomas. "There's no history, so they don't know what side effects or the outcome will be. But from a physiological point of view, it's very good. I feel fine."

Carey, who was a fireballing left-hander who spent six seasons in the Mets organization, was the 24th overall player chosen in major league baseball's 1967 draft. For that, he received a $35,000 signing bonus, which he used to help pay off his parents' house.

Had he been the 24th overall pick in last June's baseball draft, his bonus would have been nearly $900,000.

"Then I'd probably buy a new car because right now, I need one," Carey said.

Gophers 6-10, 320-pound basketball freshman Mo Walker from Toronto and 6-3, 180-pound fellow Canadian teammate Devoe Joseph have been pals since they were youngsters. Walker has dropped nearly 4 percent of body fat since arriving in Minnesota.

Walker, by the way, has an uncle and cousins living in Edina.

Reigning Mr. Basketball Minnesota Kevin Noreen, a 6-10 freshman at West Virginia, where he'll play for Bob Huggins, has increased his weight to 242 pounds from 220 last season, when he played for Minnesota Transitions.

Ex-Twins outfielder Ken Landreaux is hitting instructor for major league baseball's instructional academy in Compton, Calif., where next month St. Paul native Tim Tschida, a 25-year major league umpire, will teach about 100 umpiring hopefuls.

Ex-Gophers coach Glen Mason will headline an offensive football presentation at the American Football Coaches national "Legends" convention Jan. 9 in Dallas.

Gophers men's basketball coach Tubby Smith, 59, on entering his 37th season of coaching: "I feel like I could go for another 37 years with the energy I feel for this team."

Former Timberwolves broadcast voice Kevin Harlan returns to Minnesota to call the Vikings-Cowboys game today on Westwood One.

Brothers Marty and Gordy Morgan, Carleton "Donny" Carlson, Bruce Reimer and Jennifer (Bell) Gerz-Escandon have been elected to the Bloomington Kennedy Athletics Hall of Fame.

Former Gophers heavyweight wrestling champion Cole Konrad won the Bellator mixed martial arts tournament and a check for $100,000 last week.

Don Mincher, 72, who lives in Huntsville, Ala., and was the Twins' starting first baseman in the 1965 World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers, said he loves the New York Yankees, but had he been talented enough to have been a hall of famer, he would go in wearing a Twins cap.

"Because (Minnesota) was my favorite place to be," he told the New York Times. "The people up there are wonderful."

The realignment of the American Association reunited the St. Paul Saints with rival Fargo-Moorhead. Meanwhile, Fargo-Moorhead's exodus from the Northern League for the American Association leaves the Zion (Ill.) team owned by actor Kevin Costner nearly orphaned.

Look for former St. Bernard's coach Tim Johnson to be the new girls basketball coach at Minneapolis North High.

Wayzata's Alyssa Herron Super, who represents brother Tim Herron of the PGA Tour and Juli Inkster of the LPGA Tour, is on Golf Magazine's top-40 most influential people in golf under age 40 list. Alyssa became an agent after a nationally successful playing career.

Herron, by the way, shot a pair of 67s for a fifth-place tie after the first two rounds of this week's Frys.com tournament in San Martin, Calif.

Happy birthday: Mary Robertson, wife of late Twins executive Jimmy Robertson, turned 85 the other day. She lives in Edina and is undergoing radiation treatment for skin cancer.

Ex-Gophers basketball standout Damian Johnson is playing professionally in Japan.

Special-teams coach for the New England Patriots, who recently unloaded wideout Randy Moss on the Vikings, is Scott O'Brien, a native of Superior, Wis., and former Wisconsin-Superior football player.

Ex-Timberwolf Al Jefferson, after scoring 24 points for the Utah Jazz in an exhibition victory over the Phoenix Suns the other day, to the Associated Press: "This offense gets along. It gets you the ball in the right spot."

Gophers basketball co-captain Blake Hoffarber continues to practice 500 shots a day, he said, imagining that he has to make them in the last second to win a game.

Hoffarber has a 3.4 grade-point average in the Carlson School of Management.

The Twins' refund process for unplayed playoff games this season is under way, with credit cards to be credited within the next 10 days.

Timberwolf Kevin Love is tied with the Los Angeles Clippers' Blake Griffin for the NBA exhibition season rebound lead with 11.5 per game.

The Minnesota-Morris football teams of 1975 through '78 that went undefeated in 28 games in the then-Northern Intercollegiate Conference and coached by Al Molde were inducted into the school's hall of fame the other day.

Robert Aasen, Michele Kaminski Miller and Alice Commers are headed for the Columbia Heights Athletic Hall of Fame.

Jessie Aney, 12, a tennis and hockey player from Rochester, Minn., is among 10 finalists from 2,000 entries for Sports Illustrated SportsKid of the Year.

Bill Halbrehder, Bob Davidson, Tom Milani, Lynn Stottler and Dave Viaene have been elected to the Minnesota-Duluth Athletic Hall of Fame.

Somerset Country Club has shortened its No. 17 par-3 hole from 161 yards to 145 yards while enlarging the green and adding three sand bunkers, some of which are six feet deep.

A Totino-Grace football victory over North Branch on Wednesday would be No. 100 for Eagles coach Jeff Ferguson, who is 99-11 in his ninth season at the Fridley school.

DON'T PRINT THAT

Jacque Jones' quest to return to the major leagues with the Twins apparently has ended.

The Twins are leaning toward not offering Jones a contract for 2011. Jones, 35, is among 13 six-year minor league free agents in the organization. The Twins are negotiating with some of them, but not Jones.

Jones, who played seven major league seasons for the Twins, was signed last season and dispatched to Class AAA Rochester, where he hit .280 with four home runs in 96 games.

When the Twins brought him north from spring training for two exhibition games against the St. Louis Cardinals at Target Field, fans gave him standing ovations when he came to bat.

Plans now are for the Twins to supply Rochester with younger prospects next season. The Twins say they appreciated Jones' effort this year.

Adding to some Gophers football players' woes last week, University of Minnesota police tagged them for illegal parking of their on-campus scooters.

Former Gophers basketball star Ray Williams, who went on to become a captain of the New York Knicks, then became homeless when he fell on hard times, spends his days selling fish that he catches off a Miami pier, AOL Fanhouse reports. Recently, though, Williams, 55, has been offered a recreation department job in Mount Vernon, N.Y., where he was raised.

If Carmelo Anthony is still with the Denver Nuggets at trade time in February, look for the Timberwolves to make a serious run at him.

Had major league umpire Mark Wegner not been incapacitated with a knee injury the last month of the season, chances were decent that the Cretin-Derham Hall grad would have been awarded this season's World Series.

Gophers men's basketball coach Tubby Smith said he's had just two players during his 37 years of coaching who became ineligible during the season. Al Nolen, now eligible, was one of them as a junior last season.

OVERHEARD

NBC-TV "Tonight Show" host Jay Leno during Friday's monologue: "For the second year in a row, people on Social Security will not get a cost-of-living increase. More bad news for Brett Favre."